The Lakers are 6-1 over their past seven games so you would guess that the drama surrounding the team would have died down right?

Guess again.

Despite working their way back to within three games of the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, the Lakers’s biggest two stars, Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard, seem to be at odds over the latter’s shoulder injury.

Bryant, in an exclusive interview withESPNBoston.com’s Jackie MacMullan, all but called out Howard and demanded that the star center return to action and play through a torn labrum in his shoulder.

“We don’t have time for (Howard’s shoulder) to heal,” Bryant said. “We need some urgency.”

The 34-year-old Bryant, who may realize that the window for him to win a sixth NBA title and tie Michael Jordan is closing quickly, also challenged Howard, saying the injury is something you “balance out and manage.”

Howard has not played since Jan. 30 against Phoenix and has failed to reach double figures in either scoring or rebounding in six of his past seven contests. The star center did fire back at Bryant on Thursday.

“That’s his opinion,” Howard told ESPNLosAngeles.com. “That’s it. He’s not a doctor, I’m not a doctor.

”I want to play, I mean, why wouldn’t I want to play? But, at the same time, this is my career, this is my future, this is my life. I can’t leave that up to anybody else because nobody else is going to take care of me. So, if people are pissed off that I don’t play or if I do play, whatever it may be, so what? This is my career. If I go down, then what? Everybody’s life is going to go on. I don’t want to have another summer where I’m rehabbing and trying to get healthy again. I want to come back and have another great year. That’s what I want to do.”

Howard has previously noted that Bryant needed three years playing alongside Shaquille O’Neal as a way to deflect negative attention on the Lakers’ struggles, but that clearly isn’t going to cut it for the ultra-competitive Bryant.

“We don’t have three years,” Kobe said. “We’ve got this year.

“(Howard) has never been in a position where someone is driving him as hard as I am, as hard as this organization is,” Bryant told MacMullan. “It’s win a championship or everything is a complete failure. That’s just how (the Lakers) do it. And that’s foreign to him. When you think about it, there aren’t many organizations that look at it that way.”

Howard’s return is even more important after the team learned that Pau Gasol will miss four-to-six weeks with a torn plantar fascia in his right foot, an injury he suffered on Tuesday night against the Nets.

Howard participated in the team’s shootaround this morning in Boston and is expected to play against the Celtics tonight.